The increasing availability of mobile devices and the commensurate increase in mobile device application offerings are immutable trends in the current economy. Nearly two billion people currently have access to a smartphone, and that number is expected to exceed 2.5 billion within the next three years. Mobile application development is growing at an incredible rate due to the growth of this market and the low barriers to entry associated with the development of an application that can be provided direct to consumers via well-established channels. The increase in mobile application development has also lead to a burgeoning field of tools used to aide ever more people in the development of software. This includes tools for actual code development as well as the provisioning of more liquid channels for sharing and integrating modularized software.
Payment processing is an example of the kind of functionality that has been modularized for inclusion in mobile applications developed by third parties. Payment processors provide application developers with the ability to incorporate payment processing functionality into their applications via published application programming interfaces (APIs) and code blocks that are available for insertion into the developer's source code. For example, FIG. 1 illustrates a mobile device 100 running a mobile application that includes integrated payment processing functionality. The payment processing functionality is integrated in that a user of the mobile application can initiate a payment and conduct a transaction with the provider of the mobile application from within the application itself. As illustrated, a user can interact with the mobile application via a user interface 101 by selecting an item for purchase and identifying a quantity to be purchased. Then, the user can initiate the payment processing functionality by selecting a payment button 102. The button and the functionality that is triggered by the button's selection is implemented using code provided by the payment processor. When the payment is complete, the user continues their experience with the mobile application using code developed by the mobile application developer. This results in a seamless user experience because the user does not need to leave the application in order to conduct their payment transaction.
This may also apply to the online gaming environment for transactions that may be a bet, wager or purchase.